The Little Baby and the Great Ape

Arizona’s Family Planning Associates abortion clinic on North 7th Street is well known for having said on different occasions that if a baby is born alive after an abortion, the staff will do nothing to save that child. This past March, at the same location, a 911 call was made during which the caller explained that when the baby was removed from his mother’s uterus, he was in fact breathing. This preborn child, 21 weeks gestational age when aborted, could have been spared death by abortion if only someone had taken action to resuscitate him. A local television station reported on this event,

The police reports shows the mother, 27, had been scheduled for an abortion, but went into what the report called "spontaneous labor." The doctor at the clinic near downtown Phoenix told police she had checked for a fetal heartbeat before the procedure and found none. She said she believed the baby would be stillborn.

The reports said a nurse went to weigh the fetus, which is standard procedure, and thought she saw it move and struggle to breathe. "Oh my God this fetus is moving," the reports claim she said.

Staff at the clinic then called 911 and paramedics began CPR while transporting the baby to Banner University Medical Center, the report said. But doctors there did not find a heartbeat and pronounced the baby deceased within a few minutes.

In other words, this baby was recognized as a human being, but died as a result of circumstances that evolve in a nation that condones the killing of a preborn baby up until the moment of birth—and apparently for seconds after birth.

What makes this story so very relevant today is another story that we have been following for a couple of days. That one involves the shooting death of a gorilla at the Cincinnati, Ohio, zoo. Somehow, a 4-year-old boy got into the cage and the gorilla closed in on the child, moving him around so that, at times, his head was banging against the concrete. Zoo officials knew that a tranquilizer dart would take 10-15 minutes to take effect and only anger the gorilla in the meantime, so they decided to shoot it. In this case the child was saved, rather than allowed to die.

The gorilla, on the other hand, has become a celebrity among animal rights protestors! As one report tells us, there is an online petition calling for the parents of the little boy to be held responsible for the death of the 17-year-old ape, known as Harambe. So far the petition has garnered nearly 500,000 signatures and is still going strong.

We live in an age where the rights of animals appear to have caught the imagination of many, leading one to wonder what has happened to the moral compass in our land. We know that there are professors like Peter Singer who work hard every day to see whether or not the law can confer the legal status of personhood on animals like the great apes. And we are sickened by the fact that, during a protest in Cincinnati, one child was carrying a sign that read “Protect the Animals, Keep Brats out of the Habitats!”

So now we must ask: Where were the petitions for justice for the child born alive after the abortion in Phoenix? That human being—a 21-week-old person—was allowed to die!

Where is the outrage over the thousands of babies who die violent deaths in abortion mills across America every day? Why haven’t millions come forth to demand equal justice for innocent human beings prior to birth?

The great ape is definitely a beautiful animal, but nothing in creation compares to the dignity of the human being. This is why Saint John Paul II wrote words that I can only hope one day ring true in the minds of every person in our nation: “The life which God gives man is quite different from the life of all other living creatures, inasmuch as man, although formed from the dust of the earth is a manifestation of God in the world, a sign of his presence, a trace of his glory.”

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